


The Price of Survival

by NoisyNoiverns



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Hospitalization, Not Canon Compliant, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 13:02:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8625427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoisyNoiverns/pseuds/NoisyNoiverns
Summary: Lieutenant Abrudas survived the events of Shanxi, but at a cost. Now she's landed in the hospital with a mostly-crushed leg, a media circus just outside her window, and the only other survivor she could talk to dropped in for a few visits before up and vanishing, off on his own mysterious mission. She can't get out of bed without help, the only people she can talk to about what happened are psychologists who weren't there, and she is very, very bored.Surviving Shanxi was only the beginning.





	1. Chapter 1

Pain was the first thing Abrudas knew when she woke up.

Her body was on fire. Shooting, stabbing pain, like her bones were splintering her leg apart from the inside out. Dull, throbbing pain, a small animal nested inside her cowl and growling with every stubborn beat of her heart. Roaring pain splitting her head apart. Pain, pain, pain.

There was a yelp from somewhere off to her side. Panicked subvocals bombarded her cowl, disturbed the little animal, made it stir and shriek and shred at the bone matrix it had invaded. Muffled shouts she couldn’t hear over the ringing protests her plates made.

Her eyes tried to pry themselves open, pupils contracting so quickly at the sudden light it brought yet more hurt. Not that it mattered, anyway- there was nothing but a sea of white, with flashes of motion she couldn’t make out. She could make out beeping now. High-pitched and insistent, stabbing the creature in her chest with a sharpened stick. It screamed back, and the nerves in her cowl screamed with it.

The voices she’d heard came into focus enough she could pick out sentences. A lot of words she couldn’t understand, voices she dimly recognized from the rare occasions she bothered to go to medbay.

Then there was pressure on her hand, a scrape of talon on talon as another hand twined with hers. “Go back to sleep, Lieutenant,” a new voice urged her, an order with subvocals meant more to soothe than command. She tried to turn her head to look instead, and then another hand was at the base of her skull, thumb-claw at the joint of her mandible. “No, no, don’t,” the voice said, commanding tones ebbing out to be replaced with concern. “Not yet. I’ll see you soon, but not yet.”

The pain was making her head swim, but she could definitely feel more of it- a prick at her hand, then something being pushed in. A moment passed, then everything started to fade. Mostly the pain, which was nice, but the white in her field of view was slowly going dark, which was significantly less so. She clenched the hand being held, receiving a little whine for her efforts, then did her best to strain against the grip at the back of her head. “Desolas,” she managed to gasp out through gritted teeth, then everything went dark.

* * *

The next time she woke, the pain was gone, for the most part. There was, however, the issue of whatever it was she could definitely feel inserted in her hand, which she _definitely_ didn’t like.

She clenched her hand experimentally, making sure she still had control, then quickly stopped that when the thing in it shifted into a position that was somehow even more uncomfortable, pushing underneath her plates and shoving up against bone.

Her eyes were reluctant to open, trying desperately to hang onto the comforting vestiges of sleep. There was no pain in sleep. She was pretty sure she hadn’t dreamed, or if she had, nothing she could remember. At least she didn’t hurt anymore. The animal in her cowl had gone to sleep, and the stabbing in her leg had subsided to a dull ache. Her headache was still there, but then, she supposed that could just be because she’d been asleep. She’d always had a problem with getting headaches after sleeping for too long. The beeping noise was still in the room with her, steady and high-pitched, but much less painful than before. More annoying than anything else, really.

If she could just take care of the thing in her hand…

She finally got her eyes to stay open and focus, and as her first order of business, she looked straight to her left hand. A thick, stiff-looking tube had been inserted just below her hand plates and taped down. At the end not stabbing her hand, there was a blue device, then a thinner, more flexible tube leading up to some sort of pouch holding a clear liquid. The various markings on the pouch made it difficult to read, but she could make out a couple words. Most notably, “morphine.”

Ah. That explained the lack of pain, then.

Just behind the pouch was a neat little table, with a terminal set up to display various medical scanners she preferred to only see in medical dramas. One appeared to be a heart monitor- that would be the beeping, she supposed. Well, she could tolerate that. Maybe. She’d have to see if there was a way to turn down the volume.

Her other arm wasn’t terribly interested in moving, but her mother had always said she was nothing if not stubborn. Slowly, but gaining speed as she adjusted to moving again, she got it to lift up and start to reach over-

-only to have it get seized and brought back down. “Ah, ah, ah, don’t do that,” came a gentle scold. “Take that out, and the pain will knock you right back down.”

She spun her head so fast she heard her spinal plates click. A pale, blue-striped face quirked up battle-scarred mandibles at her, and she tried very hard to pretend the monitor wasn’t happily chirping out the way her heart sped up. “Desolas?”

Desolas’s subvocals set to humming, and he grinned, but didn’t relinquish her arm. “The one and only.”

She lowered her brow plates, thinking hard. “What happened? Where are we?”

Desolas’s grin disappeared, replaced by a thoughtful flick of his mandibles. “What do you remember?”

Her mandibles turned in small circles. “Uh…” The morphine was making her thoughts sluggish, as if sleep were a small child tugging on their mother’s hand and quietly begging to go home, with her brain as the mother. “We were groundside. Some really fucking ugly desert planet. And there were aliens on it. _Ugly_ aliens-”

“Like that narrows it down,” Desolas muttered with a snicker.

“Shut up,” she scolded, but her mandibles flicked up in a smile, betraying her. “They were, like… super ugly. Like asari, but not blue? And hairy.”

“Humans,” he supplied, moving the chair he was sitting in so he could lean forward and rest his head on his arms, despite still loosely holding onto hers. “Go on.”

She nodded. “Yeah, those things. And some of them managed to capture you, and lure the rest of us into a trap.” She flared out her nasal plates as a memory popped up, sharp despite the drug haze clouding her mind’s eye. “One of them said something about how I’m so ugly I should just kill myself.”

“I think that one was named Ben or something,” Desolas said. “Don’t know, don’t care. He’s dead now, though.”

“Right, I remember…” She frowned. “No, wait, I don’t. Everything goes blank after you got free.”

Desolas hummed low in his chest. “There was an explosion. Two of the humans got free, and so did a few of our troops.”

She frowned. “So why am I in here?”

He let out a little trill. “Well… you almost made it out. The cave was coming down, so we made a run for it. But, well…”

Her mandibles went down, and she jerked her head to one side, flashing her teeth at him. “What _happened_ , Desolas?”

It hurt her cowl to make subvocals, but Desolas seemed to get her tone all the same. “I don’t know exactly, but you got caught. We managed to dig you out and get medical, but you were unconscious. There was… There was a lot of blood, Valis.”

Her heart caught in her throat. It took her a moment to unravel the knot, but she managed to get out, “How bad?”

Desolas wouldn’t look at her. “A lot of plates on your chest cracked, and there’s a split in your cowl. And your legs…” He swallowed. “Your right leg got away with just a few breaks, but the left was crushed. They said they can fix it, but not completely. You’ll limp for the rest of your life.”

Forget her throat. Her heart now dropped to somewhere around her ankles. Her throat felt too dry to swallow, and her tongue was a heavy, swollen lump in her mouth. She slowly turned her head, looking at the shape under the blankets where her legs were. She couldn’t look. She had to.

She twisted the arm Desolas was holding so she was gripping his bicep, then reached with the hand being stabbed by the IV to pull away the blankets.

Her eyes screwed themselves shut as the covers fell away. Spirits, she didn’t want to see. _You’ll have to see it sooner or later_ , she scolded herself. _It’s only a matter of time_.

Slowly, agonizingly, she pried open one eye, only to slam it shut at the sight that greeted her. Then, with a soft sigh, she forced it back open, wincing at the quiet shriek of her talons against Desolas’s plates as her grip tightened.

The thing under the blankets wasn’t even recognizable as something that maybe considered being a leg at some point in time. It was a mess of splints and bandages, most tainted blue from the blood she was sure was probably still slowly oozing out of her in places. What she could see of what used to be her plates was more like fine gravel, ranging in size from a talon-prick to the circumference of the larger of her two fingers. Her entire foot had been neatly bound, splinted, and cast, just the very points of her toe-claws peeking out at the end. She couldn’t see anything resembling actual bends where her joints should be- just where different splints interchanged, and the short gaps where plates would make room for articulation.

Spirits, that wasn’t going to heal pretty.

She looked away, and the weight of the blankets was draped back over her leg as Desolas murmured, “I talked to one of your doctors. He said it would be faster and easier to just amputate and wire you for a prosthetic, but they want to talk to you about it before they go ahead. Then he went into psych-babble, so I don’t know what he said next.”

She forced a small smile, one mandible jerking up briefly. “Did your brain hurt from words with more than three syllables?”

He headbutted her, but in a gentle kind of way, and she managed a real smile as his crest pressed against her side. “Hilarious. Really, you should consider stand-up.”

She turned back to look at him as he sat up and shook his neck out. “Anyway, bottom line is, they’re going to offer you the choice of either being out of here soon, but losing your leg, or keeping the leg, but being here a lot longer. Just in bigger words.”

She nodded. “Right,” she said, trying to ignore how it felt like her intestines were playing clawball with her gizzard. “And, what, are you about to say you’ll be here to hold my hand and fuss like a first-time mother regardless?”

Desolas gave a humorless chuckle. “Unfortunately, no. I still have work to do. Loose ends to tie up, superiors to appease, you know the drill.”

Her throat seized, and she struggled to fight back the wave of panic now surging over her mind. “Oh, so you’re just going to leave me here alone, then,” she managed to get out. “Thanks. Really feel the love.”

“Sorry.” His subvocals whined in sympathy. “I have friends in the city. I can see if any of them would be willing to drop in, maybe bring you some things.”

She drew her mandibles in close to her face. “Where will _you_ be?” Couldn’t he do that himself?

“Not in Cipritine,” he said, voice suddenly sharp. “You won’t be along, so you don’t need to know.”

After how gentle and conversational he’d been, it was like a slap in the face. This was her superior officer speaking, not her friend. Automatically, her head went down, and her mandibles tilted so the extensions at the back flared out. “Understood, sir,” she muttered, forcing her voice to stay even. “Sorry.”

Desolas was silent for a moment, then he sighed and leaned forward to nudge her head with his. “Sorry,” he grumbled. “I’ve had to answer an awful lot of prying questions lately. You didn’t deserve that.”

She considered this, then knocked her head against his. A reprimanding gesture, not a forgiving one. “Well, remember that,” she groused. “Leave me out of your temper tantrums.”

He withdrew, rubbing his head and waggling his mandibles in apology. “Sorry,” he repeated with a shake of his head.

She tilted her head down in as domineering a gesture as she could manage, then sighed and eased back against her pillows. All the movement was making her dizzy. “Spirits,” she exhaled, closing her eyes. “At least tell me we kicked ass.”

“Well…”

She cracked one eye open and lowered that brow plate and the corresponding mandible. “Pick your words damn carefully, Arterius.”

Desolas heaved a sigh. “Council called a cease-fire. I don’t know much else, I got mad and turned off the news. There's a bunch of reporters milling around, though. Trying to get sound bites, and all. Don’t be surprised if any try to talk to you.”

Heat flared in her gut, and a low growl started in her chest despite the cowl pain it incurred. “A _cease-fire?”_ She pulled herself back into a sitting position. “What the _fuck!?”_

“That’s what _I_ said!” Desolas’s subvocals surged, a roiling mix of fury and wounded pride, with an undercurrent of intense pleasure she agreed with him. “The humans were going to doom themselves and all of us with them for all we knew, we had to act.”

Abrudas hissed. “Not our fault they’re a bunch of whiny-”

“Poorly-disciplined-”

“Ugly-”

“Weak-willed-”

“Entitled _infants!”_ she concluded, flinching as the heart monitor’s beeps scolded her for getting excited.

Desolas was practically vibrating. His mandibles went up, tight to his face, in a vicious grin. “You should’ve _seen_ the look on their general’s face when he surrendered,” he sneered, subvocals now switching to a gloat. “He was so angry. It was almost worth the peace treaty.”

She shook her head. “Did you get a picture?”

“Saren did. I’ll ask him for it.”

She smirked and leaned back against the pillows again. “Council should’ve let us crush them. Teach ’em a lesson.”

He snorted. “I wish. Bet you anything it was stupid asari meddling. Damn snobs think they know what’s best for everyone.”

She shook her head. “I’m telling you, aliens are alright enough, but that superiority complex the asari have going really gets on my last nerve.”

Desolas folded his arms under his keel and opened his mouth, but she cut him off before he could. “Don’t start,” she warned. She’d heard his “we’d run the galaxy better” speech plenty of times before. “I’ve told you, cooperation with the aliens is a necessary aggravation. We can do things better with their support than without it.” She considered, then added, “Doesn’t mean asari aren’t stuck-up little flower-eaters, though.” Even if their soap operas _were_ sometimes good daytime watching.

He deflated slightly, then shook his head and huffed. “Fine, fine. I have work to do, so I should get going.”

She’d worked with him long enough to know that was Desolas code for _I don’t want to argue with you, but I also don’t want to let you think you’ve won this round, so I’m going to leave before this heats up._ “Fine,” she said, squirming to make herself more comfortable. “Bring me the vidscreen remote, would you?”

“Yeah, sure.” He got to his feet and strode over to the vidscreen on the wall facing her. His subvocals were more subdued now, a bizarre mix of irritation and fondness overlaid with an equal blend of both eagerness and reluctance to leave. _Men_ , she thought to herself with a suppressed snort, ignoring the little voice in the back of her head reminding her that she’d had plenty of female partners do the same.

He brought her the remote, leaning over her to slide it up against her non-shunted hand. The hand not delivering the remote brushed up against her left hip spur, and from the angle of his head she was certain he was just positioning himself so she’d get a good, long look at his long crest and broad cowl. Figured.

She grasped the remote and eyed him. “What, hoping your rugged good looks will get me to forget an argument?”

He hummed, making her cowl throb faintly, then leaned over and headbutted her. “Can I not want to leave on a good note? I might not be able to visit for a few months.”

“How starry-eyed do you think I am?” She pushed him back. “We’ll talk about it when I see you again, and I’m not going to forget about it.”

He withdrew, looking vaguely offended for a moment, then shook his head and snorted. “Fine, fine, understood, ma’am.” He gave his mandibles a sharp flick, folded his arms, and sighed. “I’ll try to drop by as much as I can before I have to leave. But just so you know, the media’s still in a furor over 314. Don’t be surprised if you get a swarm of reporters. They’ve been hassling me since touchdown.”

She drew her mandibles up against her face. “Duly noted.” She regarded him for a moment longer, noting the tension in his shoulders, the tightness to how he held his mandibles, then grumbled and jerked her head in a _come here_ gesture.

He obliged, and she hauled her tube-riddled hand up to grasp the back of his head and drag him down to a rough kiss, shoving her nasal plates against his and stretching her mandibles forward to tangle with his. His subvocals hitched in surprise, then hummed distinct pleasure as he returned the favor, parting his jaws and sliding out his tongue to press against her mouth plates. She held her own jaws shut for a moment, just to remind him who was in charge, then let him in, caressing his tongue with hers, reveling in the slight tugs as the rough, barbed muscles caught on each other for half a second before releasing, sliding along, and repeating.

After a few moments of losing herself in the kiss and the hot, heavy air puffing out of Desolas’s mouth and the neck muscles tensing under her fingers, she dropped her hand and pulled away, chancing a weak pleased subvocal, despite the dull pain it spurred in her cowl. “Let’s call that a promise.”

Desolas always looked a little lost after he got kissed. He stared off into space, and his nasal plates flared to soak in what scent and taste still lingered, and his mandibles rotated in aimless circles. A tap of her hand against the bed frame brought him back, and he shook his head, quirking one mandible skyward and the other down. “What happened to being mad at me?”

“Oh believe me, I’m _very_ mad at you. But in case I don’t see you again for months, I’m making sure you come back.” Her mandibles fluttered, and her weak, pained subvocals took on a note of determination. “Soon as I’m out of here, I’m _screwing your damn brains out.”_

She could practically hear him shiver. He leaned over her, pressing his frontal plate to hers and breathing, “Spirits, you’re hot when you do that.”

She fought a grin, pushing back against his cowl with her free hand. “That’s flattering and all, but you _did_ see my leg, right? I get the feeling I’m going to be frustrated for a while.”

Desolas’s subvocals thrummed with a mix of sympathy and understanding, and he stood up straight again, brushing a hand absently along her shoulder. “I suppose you’re right. And I really should get going. I’ll let the nurses know you’re awake.”

She hummed to herself. “Don’t forget to message me now and then. Not like I have much else to do.”

He nodded, knowing a dismissal when he saw one, and headed for the door. “Later, Valis.”

She grunted as the door opened, and she settled back against the pillows, grabbing the remote again and turning on the vidscreen. Maybe she’d luck out, and there’d be a documentary on how to survive extended hospital stays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so anyway canon can kiss my ass


	2. Chapter 2

When Abrudas was a small child, she’d been taught to respect doctors. Be honest and upfront with medical staff, do what they tell you, and everything will work out okay. Not to mention Mari wouldn’t whack her upside the head, either.

Listening to Dr. Corelus prattle on, however, she was strongly debating whether or not it would be worth the reprimanding blow she’d receive to ignore this one.

Desolas had been half-right. The doctors did indeed tell her it was either live with a mangled leg, or let them lop it off and put in a prosthetic. Clone replacement tissue was an option, but given an entirely new leg had to be grown, it would take years, and there was no guarantee the rest of her body would play nice with it. Attaching a prosthetic would be infinitely quicker.

What Desolas hadn’t mentioned, however, was a bit more pressing.

“What do you mean, _brain damage?”_ she’d snapped when the neurologist had explained. “I’m _fine!”_

Dr. Sparatus’s long, skinny mandibles had drawn in close to his face. “Exactly what I said, Captain,” he’d sniffed, nasal plates giving her an impressively offended flare despite the white patch of age that almost completely covered them. “The blows to your head suffered on Shanxi would have caused your brain to be bounced around inside your skull. The scans performed while you were unconscious and being transported here confirmed it. There’s bruising on your frontal and occipital lobes, and there’s a chance your optical nerves may be damaged as well. Given the angle, you’re lucky to be _alive._ A few degrees sharper, and you would have died of internal decapitation.”

She’d decided very quickly she didn’t like the neurologist. He couldn’t even get her rank right.

Now Dr. Corelus, apparently in charge of her whole case, was going into detail on the treatment plan, and Abrudas hated every word that was coming out of her mouth. “So then, once we’re sure your brain has finished its reboot process, we’ll start all the scans and tests to determine the, ahem, _impact_ all those falling rocks had on your brain, if you’ll excuse the pun.”

Abrudas lowered one mandible and both brow plates, and Corelus fidgeted a bit, then coughed into her fist. “Yeah, I didn’t think it was funny either, but it was the only word I could think of,” she offered, subvocals trilling an apology.

Abrudas snorted and looked away, and the apology switched to vague irritation. “Captain, I’m sorry, but recovering from injuries like yours takes a long time. This is the best we can do.”

“And what are you going to do about why I’m hurt in the first place?” she snarled, jerking her head back around to glower at the doctor. She’d always had an intimidating glower, she’d learned as a child, and it had served her well in the military. “Those- those- those-” What had Desolas called them? “Those _aliens_ behind this are still at large!”

Corelus drew herself up, nasal plates flaring and mandibles clicking against her jaw. “That conflict is _over,_ Captain,” she scolded. “The Council-”

“The Council are two pushovers and a flower-eating, weak-willed, stuck-up little _blunt-tooth_ of an asari!” she bellowed in return, pushing herself up to lean towards the doctor despite the sharp pangs of protest from her broken plates. She’d had worse. “Desolas said Aepharia’s going to have to resign, I hope that Ambassador Sparatus has more bite than that old windbag!”

Corelus nearly jumped to her feet, fire in her eyes and indignance in her subvocals. _“Valis,”_ she said, voice clipped, “I understand you’re upset, but this attitude-”

“Oh, stuff it in your gizzard,” she hissed, turning away. “You should be happy I can’t stand.”

She made a noise Abrudas could only really describe as _pissed,_ and clapped her datapad to her chest. “I’ll tell the nurses to up your painkillers,” she sniffed. “Maybe that will help your mood. I’ll be back to continue this conversation later.”

As the doctor spun on her heel and marched for the door, Abrudas growled. “You wanna help my mood, _kill Jack Harper!”_ she called after Corelus’s retreating back. “And stop calling me Captain!”

There was no response, but it still felt good to say it.

She sighed and thumped back against the pillows. This was going to be a long stay.

If the universe had any sense of justice, Desolas would have walked in then, she told herself, conjuring up the scene in her mind’s eye. _“What was that all about?”_ he’d say, and she’d grumble something about stupid doctors being stupid. Then he’d make a joke about playing nice, and she’d show him her teeth, and he’d laugh and show her whatever gift he’d brought to appease her…

She allowed herself to drift off into fantasy, closing her eyes and squirming to make herself more comfortable. Desolas had visited her again the night after they’d argued, all soft subvocals and gentle touches. He hadn’t conceded defeat, merely apologized for fighting with her, the sort of half-victory she’d told herself right then she’d break him out of the habit of making.

If she saw him again.

She banished the thought as quickly as it had come. He _would_ come back, she scolded her subconscious. He was a _general,_ and an _Arterius._ He’d said he was working with his brother- if a Spectre coming along wasn’t a guarantee of success, nothing was.

The dread gnawing at her gizzard didn’t care much about how sure she was of Desolas’s return. She forced herself back to drawing up another visit in her mind’s eye to ignore it.

She’d gotten to the part where Desolas would tell her of some stupid thing he and Saren had done, and if only she’d been there to keep them from getting into too much trouble, when a knock came at the door. With a growl low enough to not disturb the parts of her cowl that were still healing, she pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Who’s there?”

There was a pause, then a voice called back, “Not a doctor. I’m a friend of Desolas’s.”

She debated, then tapped the key on the side of the bed to open the door. “Alright, come in.”

The door slid open with a cheerful chime, and a tall, white-plated crestless turian walked in, head neatly ensconced in a dark green headscarf. Her right hand was clutched tight in the grip of a maroon crested who couldn’t have been older than nine or ten years. She paused near where Abrudas’s knees should have been, and dropped into a tidy little bow. After a sharp nudge to his shoulder, the child bowed too, still half-hiding behind the crestless. “Sephira Actinus,” she said as she straightened back up. “Desolas asked me to come see you.”

Abrudas nodded to her, then turned her head and flicked a mandible in the child’s direction. “Yours?”

Sephira glanced back, then made a noise that might have been flustered if it had come from any turian other than this one and pulled the child forward into view. “Yes, sorry, he’s a bit shy,” she said. “Axilus, do you remember what I told you?”

The child- Axilus- looked up at his mother with wide eyes, mandibles fluttering wildly, then whined and looked back at Abrudas. “Axilus Madelivio, ma’am,” he said, still pressing against Sephira like he was trying to phase through her, “My father is- is Major Aephis Madelivio, ma’am, and- and my mother is…” He whined again and looked up at Sephira. “Mom, I forget.”

She hummed and gave him a little side-hug. “That’s okay, Axi. Go find your grandmother and ask when she’s expecting us for dinner, okay?”

“Okay, Mom.” Axilus reached up to hug his mother around the chest, rubbing his face against her keel, then bolted for the door faster than Abrudas knew children could even consider moving.

Sephira glanced back the way he’d gone with a wistful sigh. “You know, his father’s a major, and _his_ father’s a general, and so on, and he _still_ gets nervous around authority. I thought he was used to it by now, but I guess some things you can’t condition a kid for.”

Abrudas snorted, motioning towards a chair for her to sit in. “Eh. I’m told I scare people. How old is he?”

“Eight,” Sephira mused, gliding over to the seat Abrudas had indicated with a grateful subvocal. “His brother turns fourteen in a few weeks.”

Abrudas hummed. “Almost time for boot camp, then.”

Sephira nodded with a wry flick of her mandibles. “Yes, and maybe then I can get some peace and quiet.” She shook her head. “They’re good kids, really, they just… have their father’s spirit.”

Abrudas snorted. “You mean they like to beat the shit out of each other.”

Sephira grimaced. “Basically, yeah. They’re turians through and through, I suppose.” She sighed, subvocals an even balance of affection and exasperation, then shook her head. “So, how’s the hospital been treating you, Captain?”

Abrudas opened her mouth to respond, then stiffened, Sephira’s words registering with a jolt. “I’m not a captain,” she snapped. “Everyone’s been calling me that, and I don’t know _why,_ but they’re wrong.”

Sephira jerked back, and Abrudas almost apologized. “I- I- I’m sorry, ma’am, I’d heard you’d been promoted…”

“You can’t trust the news, everyone knows that,” she growled.

Sephira blinked rapidly, wringing her wrists at light-speed. “But, I’m sorry, ma’am, Desolas was the one who…” She trailed off, mandibles drooping downward. “Oh.”

Abrudas’s mandibles flared outward. “What? What’s _oh?”_

Sephira clicked her mandibles tight to her face. “Well, ah… How long have you been awake? Since you woke up in the hospital, I mean.”

Abrudas’s brow plates sunk down far enough she could see the lower edge out of the top of her eye. “About a week.”

Sephira’s mandibles dropped again, and her brow plates rocketed so far up her face Abrudas thought they might be trying to achieve orbit. She said nothing, but her subvocals rumbled a single note: _uh-oh._

Abrudas jerked her head up, trying to look as intimidating as she could despite being trapped in a hospital bed. “Spit it out, Actinus.”

Sephira let out an odd trill, then shook her head. “I just… You’ve been awake for a little over three weeks now. Talking to people, and all.”

Her heart must’ve dropped into her gizzard, because her chest burned like acid was eating away at the inside. “I… _what?”_

Sephira said something, but Abrudas couldn’t hear. Her mind was whirling, straining to resolve her reality with the one presented to her. But her thoughts were sluggish, and her brain didn’t _want_ to make the two fit. Was that why the doctors had waited days to start talking to her? How could she be missing such massive gap of time? Why hadn’t Desolas told her?

“I’ll go get the doctor,” came Sephira’s voice, muffled and distant to Abrudas’s muddled mind. Nothing was in focus. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Her chest moved, but her brain still howled. There wasn’t enough oxygen in the galaxy to make it settle.

_What’s wrong with me?_

She didn’t remember closing her eyes, but she must have at some point, because the next thing she was able to process was opening them again to see Dr. Corelus and a nurse standing by her bed, Sephira hovering near the door with her fingers knotted together. Corelus’s mandibles were so tight against her face, Abrudas couldn’t see even a hint of her teeth. “So,” she said, motioning for the nurse to start the usual routine, “I hear you’ve discovered a secret.”

Something about the way she said it grated on Abrudas’s nerves. _Dismissal._ “You _knew?”_ she demanded, dragging herself upright again. “Why the _fuck_ wasn’t that on your little synopsis!?”

Corelus clasped her hands behind her back. “We were going to wait until a psychotherapist could talk to you. You have to understand, you were and still are in a very fragile state-”

“What, so you figured it’d be easier to just _lie_ to me?” she snarled.

Corelus’s mandibles flared out as far as they’d go, then snapped back in with a loud _clack._ “Only through omission,” she said firmly. “If you had _asked_ about the timeframe, you would have been told.”

She wasn’t sure how to answer that, so she growled and looked down at her hands. The room fell silent again, and the eyes she could feel burning into her plates said very clearly they were waiting on her. Finally, she exhaled, long and slow, and tried to be calmer as she asked, “Actinus said Desolas was talking to me the whole time. Why didn’t he say anything?”

Hesitation. Uncertain subvocals rumbled softly, then Corelus ventured, “He _tried_. A lot of us did, at first. But your brain kept dumping the information. The longest you could remember things was… I think the record held at about a day and a half. After a week, we decided it would be easiest to wait until your memory was holding better. That’s why you weren’t briefed on the extent of your injuries until today, of course- we tried every day at first, but, well, you didn’t remember a word we said, and we have other patients who needed our attention. General Arterius wasn’t pleased, but even he didn’t want to argue with us.”

She didn’t know what to say. What _could_ she say? It was solid logic, even if she didn’t like it. She couldn’t exactly blame them for not wanting to bother with someone they knew wouldn’t remember anyway.

She twisted her hands into the blanket covering her legs. “You make it sound like he kept trying after you gave up.”

Corelus hesitated again, then hedged, “He was very… He was certain you’d recover. It took multiple tries to convince him to leave it be. I don’t think…” Her subvocals were quivering with a mess Abrudas couldn’t pick apart beyond _pity_. “He was very patient, Captain. He said he’d wait.”

 _Captain._ Something stirred in the back of her mind at the word, and she told her heart it would just have to wait on feeling all fluttery over what Desolas had apparently said. “So was I really promoted, then?”

 _Surprise_ jolted through Corelus’s subvocals now, and she stammered, _“Oh,_ spirits, I forgot, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize… Yes, one moment, the Army sent a message, it’s around here somewhere…”

A drawer opened, and Abrudas finally looked up. The nurse, still working on diagnostics, pulled a datapad out of the top drawer on the bedside table and handed it to Corelus. Catching Abrudas’s eye, he raised a brow plate and jerked a shoulder towards Corelus, then shook his head.

Abrudas suppressed a snort as she accepted the datapad from the apparently oblivious Corelus. She made a mental note to try to remember that nurse. He seemed at least worth a chat.

Turning her attention to the datapad, she shook her head, then put it in the hand still partially immobilized by the IV. It would be easier to work with both hands, and that one’s fingers were still out of commission. She turned it on, adjusted the brightness setting, and read:

> _First Lieutenant Valis Abrudas:_
> 
> _In recognition of your actions during engagement of the enemy on a hostile planet, hereby referred to as the Relay 314 Incident, and of skill and dedication to the Empire demonstrated under the command of Brigadier General Desolas Arterius and throughout your career, the Army of the Turian Hierarchy has deigned to promote you to the rank of Captain._
> 
> _Further details will be forthcoming._
> 
> _Glory to the Empire._
> 
> _Lieutenant General Furiria Sansodis  
>  III Corps, Field Army, Imperial Armed Forces_

She must have read it a thousand times. Captain. Captain, captain, captain. Not a lieutenant. At her age and experience, _lieutenant_ was practically an insult, but the bureaucracy had more important people to preoccupy itself with. She’d earned this _ages_ ago, but she’d kept her stupid mouth shut, accepted her bad luck, and gotten on with it anyway. The people she worked with knew her value, and that was what really mattered, wasn’t it?

She’d been trying to convince herself of as much for years, but that didn’t change the thrill of satisfaction that raced down her spine at the words she’d never have admitted to still hoping for.

Then a niggling, very unwelcome thought pricked at her mind. Context. She’d only been promoted after almost dying, and being horrifically injured. They’d evaluated her just in case they needed to do a post-mortem award. _This is a consolation prize._

No. No, no, none of that. She shook her head hard, trying to make any notion along those lines fall out of her brain like so many raindrops. She was a capable officer, and she’d been promoted in recognition of that, she told herself fiercely. Not to assuage anyone’s guilt over her near death.

Corelus spoke again, finally, apparently having decided Abrudas had had enough time to process. “Well, now that that’s settled,” she said with a little cough, “I really do have other patients I need to see to, and besides, this really is something you should discuss more with Dr. Sparatus than with me.”

“Sparatus?” Sephira asked suddenly from the door, and Abrudas jumped. She’d forgotten she was even there. “Virian Sparatus?”

Apparently Corelus had, too, because she jumped, too, then turned to face Sephira, nodding quickly. “Yes, that’s him. The neurologist. He’s on loan from Acalin, specifically for the Captain’s case. His grandson’s going to be the new councilor, you know.”

Sephira nodded faintly. “Yes, I’m aware,” she said, staring off at something only she could see.

Corelus apparently didn’t know what to say to that, because she coughed again, then looked back to Abrudas. “Anyway, I’ll message him, and he’ll come talk to you when he has the time. Very busy old man, you know. If you need anything, you know where the nurse call button is.”

Without waiting for a response, she turned and marched off. The nurse watched her go, then rolled his eyes and entered data into his terminal. “I’m Gallus, by the way. Gallus Erasdros. Room service will show up with food in a couple hours. Just between you and me, I’d _strongly_ advise paying off your friend here to bring you something better.” His mandibles went down and in.

Abrudas snorted. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Gallus nodded and finished up his work, then gave her a little bow before heading after Corelus himself.

No sooner had he disappeared than Sephira was taking a few strides forward to take up a stance in the spot he’d vacated. “If Virian is coming by, I should probably go find Axilus and get going,” she said, subvocals singing an apology.

Abrudas raised a brow plate. “What, old patient of his?”

Sephira’s nasal plates flared in distaste. “Worse. My husband’s his grandson. We got along well enough last time we met, but I’d like to avoid any questions, all the same.”

“Ah.” Abrudas nodded sagely, even though she couldn’t relate in the slightest. “Understandable.” She hesitated, then added, “Don’t suppose you know if Des asked any of his _other_ friends to drop by, or is it just you?”

To her great relief, Sephira bobbed her head. “Definitely. We worked out a schedule, actually, since all of us have our own lives. My mother-in-law works here, so I got first slot.”

Abrudas sighed and let her shoulders slump. “Good. Thanks.”

Sephira nodded and gave a little bow. Abrudas blinked, and she was gone.

She waited a minute to see if anybody new was going to appear, then heaved a sigh and collapsed backwards into the pillows. _“Spirits.”_

She still wasn’t sure what to think. Too much information, too little time. Even before her unpleasant discovery, there’d been the talks with the doctors, and there was so much they’d told her they had to do, she wondered if she’d ever get out. Reconstructive surgeries needed for her leg and cowl. Splints and shunts and supporting matrices for her broken plates. Scans to figure out what in her brain was messed up, tests on all her senses, physical therapy… She almost wondered if maybe it would have been easier to just die back on that stupid planet.

Almost.

And that was just the physical part. They’d definitely said something about a psychotherapist, and Desolas had said something about reporters. And, of course, there was the whole thing where she was missing two weeks of her life…

She growled to herself and shook her head. She hated that she understood their logic. It wasn’t fair, it made her mad, but it made sense, from a logistical point of view.

Her brain took mercy on her then, and followed that conversation to what Corelus had said about Desolas. He’d been patient, and certain she’d recover, and determined to wait for her…

Her free hand went up to cover her face, her outer finger and the heel of her palm holding her mandibles shut to muffle a little scream. He _cared._ He’d wanted to wait for her to get better, he’d sat by her bedside while she slept without even knowing if she’d be anything resembling okay again, he’d _worried._

Part of her wanted to forgive him for their earlier argument, but the rest of her told that part to shut up. He wasn’t getting off _that_ easy.

But still.

 _Spirits,_ what she wouldn’t give for her omni-tool back. The neurologist could wait. She had questions a doctor couldn’t answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [jazz hands] surprise
> 
> this is also how i tie in the other fics ive written with abrudas in the hospital lol.... but dont let that make it seem like a cheap plot gimmick due to her injuries her memory would really have been impacted (will be explained more next chapter)


End file.
